laird

I love the way your " gentle" pulls end up at 149 mph!

I'm always a day late etc. I went the 19T route back when that was "it" but I would call that incremental improvement at best. Now I have a 20G thinking this will be the shiz when clearly, I should have gone straight past doe-decca-phonic, all the way to the " moon rock " level.

Nice eye!

Nice work! Don't forget your super cool top right engine mount/damper thing.

Why am I getting a vision of you with a four engined, white block powered swamp buggy?

Kind of surprised he didn't just fab a water pump using the cold side from a GT35 and pump all that water to PA.

I like the blacked out pillars, never noticed before. I have been thinking about doing that to the white wagon.

You need to change your VS name to "Macgyver".

There is lot of metal in there for just a valve breaking. You need to figure out where the rest came from. Is the bottom of the piston intact?

Did that ever fully engage?

You are of course referring to the engine bits. You hand sanded the engine bay and covered it it our time honored DuPont Nason in Volvo 427 grey. Can't wait to see the new motor in the new engine bay!

Mrs. must be pretty cool if she is still hanging in there. What were you doing with 9600 RPM? That may have been a precursor to your problem.

I hope you are buying your coil packs at AutoZone, They have a lifetime warranty:)

As an aside, Reuben is sticking with the 95 header which is sigificantly different from the later models. It appears to have, more or less, equal length tubes. The tubes may be a bit longer than later models and that may affect upper end power somewhat. After fixing up the exhaust to make it louder, (= faster right?) this baby will fly! (right out of my driveway to his place I hope) He has spent quite some time on gasket matching the intake/exhaust ports as well as the intake manifold. I have no doubt that this will yield impressive yet imperceivable results but the work sure looks nice:) If the JY engine works at all it will be a bonus and if not, the variable intake manifold looks interesting and an NA rebuild will begin.

April 16, 11 am, passed a sweet red P1 wagon, lowered on some kind of chrome wheels, wagon wing, northbound on I-15 south of Vegas. I was opposite direction in the R.

Who is the old guy working on your car ?

I see some aluminum fab work in my future. I tried 2 different DSM flanges but sent them both back since they were too large. Perhaps I should have kept one and fudged the holes a bit:( I wonder if the Mahle specs are a bit "loose" causing the slap, the machine shop was originally baffled and had to talk to Mahle to decipher the specs stamped on the pistons. Maybe just using standard piston clearances would have been better. I wonder if JE could make up some 9:1 83+mm pistons? My dad bought a new 128 sedan in 1974 and I ended up driving the wheels off of it in the late 70's. The 1.3 l motor was bullet proof but I became quite a Fiat transmission repair guru. I think my last syncro replace job was 4 hours from jack up to jack down. I ended up fixing a few Fiats about that time and still rememeber trying to figure a way to keep that X1/9 targa from squeeking! That is a sweet example you have there and I am sure that cow-catcher front end is awesome in deep snow!

I just spent the last two nights reading this whole thread. Very entertaining and informative. The whole time however, I wanted to ask about your bore job for the OS1 pistons you were using. I too used OS1 Mahles and have been very unhappy with the results, namely, I feel my machine shop didn't bore round holes or used bad specs. I hope you will monitor the results before you assemble the new block. I feel much of my timing pull issues are related to piston slap and I wonder if that hasn't been problem for you in getting the tune set up. I also imagine your excessive blow by might be a result of the same problem. I am no machinist but without some way to keep the free standing bores in line during the bore work, you end up with odd shaped bores. If you are going to weld/block the tops of the cylinders, do it before the machine work. I have had three different machine shops do head work and each of them have ruined several valve seals by mashing them to oblivion. I have redone plenty of seals. I have been trying to find a flange for my TD05 20G, like yours with the welded wastegate plug, but have had no success. In looking at your latest pics, it appears that you used the TD06 flange and slotted the holes. Is that correct? I want to unplug the wastegate and run a divorced setup as well, may have to fab flange. I have an 01 LPT motor waiting to go in the R and because of my machine shop jitters, I am going to put it in without a teardown. If that fails, I will grab a 2.3 block and use my already balanced/forged/OS1 bottom end and move on. I am excited to use the LPT motor since 98% of my driving is at 4200 ft. I feel the slightly higher CR will be less "soft" off idle. I am very interested in your intake and am considering using the RN intake runners to create something like yours. I enjoy watching your process of need/design/build. hats off to you for boldly going etc. Finally, I haven't driven an X/19 in years but I envy you yours!

I wonder how Marcus Luttrell feels today. Read the book, Lone Survivor, to get a glimpse of what the military have been dealing with. It is no small satisfaction to know that we can finally do what needs to be done from time to time.

27 years and going strong. That's my experience.

Actually, Facebook is where all the losers, that couldn't get into your wife's pants in high school, go to get rejected again.